


An Intermission.

by coquetteauxbasbleu



Category: Fallout 4
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-27
Updated: 2016-03-27
Packaged: 2018-05-29 12:48:19
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,243
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6375355
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/coquetteauxbasbleu/pseuds/coquetteauxbasbleu
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Just a little blurb that touches on some of Sole Survivor Madeline Sullivan's background...and baggage.</p>
            </blockquote>





	An Intermission.

     Madeline stood in front of the mirror, examining her face. Some of the marks had been there before, like the nick on her chin from the time she fell off her bike in the 4th grade. The white patches around her left eye, a sort of partial albinism, and the connected white streaks through her dark hair, on the same side of her head at the white patch, had been there since the day she was born. Faint freckles scattered across her pale cheeks, just barely there. 

     But other marks...the claw marks across her cheek, the bullet hole in her collarbone, the deep slash across the middle of her torso; those were fresh. It had only been six months in this new life, but it had left its mark; she was young, barely 26, but the dark rings around her eyes made her look older. Madeline knew that she had only been frozen, not dead, but she felt reincarnated. Her previous life was just a collection of fading memories, almost more dream than reality. Nate’s voice was almost gone. Shaun’s giggles and coos, his cries. Gone. She frowned. From the balcony of the new home she had built, at the end of the cul-de-sac past the huge, dead oak tree, she could see her old home. The one from that previous incarnation, where everything had been the picture of suburban family life. The polished car, the shined floors, and books, so many books. Her law diploma hanging on the wall, a badge of honor. Little good it did her now, all that education. What good was grammar? Literature? Law? Order? For that matter, what good had it been before the war? It hadn’t stopped the bombs. It hadn’t stopped Vault-Tec. 

     A face appeared in the mirror behind her, and she started. 

     “Boss--” MacCready stood behind her, eyebrow arched slightly under the brim of his hat. 

     Madeline shook her head and turned towards him, but kept her eyes focused downward behind her black-rimmed glasses. 

     “I was just thinking about something. I’m fine...And please don’t call me Boss, Mac. You know it doesn’t suit me.” She pushed past him to walk out into the sort of sitting area she’d created. Mama Murphy’s empty chair, a coffee table, a radio, a red sofa she’d found somewhere and dragged down the road, alone, insisting she didn’t need help (it had still taken her two days). On the wall were the double heads of an Albino Radstag she’d killed and figured out how to taxidermy herself. She had a deeply morbid streak, but MacCready wasn’t sure he could blame her. He didn’t know much about her life before she’d wandered into the Third Rail with her dog, but she’d mentioned her time in the vault, and that her husband was dead, son taken. You don’t come out of a 200 year ice nap, the murder of your partner and kidnapping of your infant without some baggage, so he didn’t say anything when she skinned particularly unique “specimens,” as she’d call them, and hauled them back to Sanctuary to hang on a wall. 

     “You don’t have to cover it up, Mads. I know how much you love to stare at your reflection. Such a vain hab--” He cut himself off. He’d meant it as a joke, but the corners of her lips remained frozen in place, curved ever so slightly downward. It made him uneasy. “Well, anyway, you have the caps, so you’re the boss. That was the agreement, wasn’t it?” She’d hired him about four months ago, but despite a fondness that had developed between them, he wasn’t quite ready to let her feel like she had made him uncomfortable. Particularly when she was having one of her days. And it was becoming clear that today would be one of those days. Little would be done. She might wander around the settlement listlessly or spend hours locked in her bedroom, which she had made exceedingly clear to the settlers was her space, and hers alone. Piper (when she wasn’t in Diamond City), MacCready, and Dogmeat were the only other inhabitants she had allowed into her personal sanctuary. 

     It was a neatly arranged, narrow room, just wide enough for a bed, a loveseat, and a TV set. MacCready had no idea why she had the TV...Nostalgia, maybe. It never showed anything except the “Please Stand By” screen, but she never turned it off. Waste of generator power, really. But she was the Boss. Her settlement, her caps. 

     She’d built that upper floor into several rooms, the one next door to hers being where she had said MacCready could stay, if he’d rather be there than the dormitory-style arrangements she’d made in some of the other houses for the settlers. Of course he had accepted. He prefered the raised rooms of her house to the first story dormitory. Easier to get a clean shot from the balconies, or up on the roof. 

     His proximity to her room and the thin wall (consisting almost entirely of boards cobbled together with nails, some wire, and duct tape) between them was not without its downside, however. He’d listened to her sob all night (and day) on more than one occasion, locked in her room, curled up on her bed with Dogmeat. He could still hear her even when she turned the radio up and let the ceiling fan rattle. 

    He wouldn’t mention it. He’d had his own battles with despair. Let her fight hers however she needed to. If locking the door and sobbing onto that stupid dog was what she needed to do every few weeks, so be it. 

    On the road, she seemed entirely different. She was the sort that needed a task to keep her happy, or if not happy, at least not depressed. Boredom and placidity dropped her into a pit of self-loathing and despair, torturing herself with some secret she’d been keeping. MacCready suspected it had something to do with her husband and son, but didn’t ask. Of course, her times on the road were not without their peculiarities, either. When they stopped for the night (invariably within some well-surrounded space, always on a second floor, with a roof and a window), she would pace incessantly until finally passing out in a rumpled heap on her bedroll. He’d chastised her, saying the constant footfalls and her shadow moving back and forth could attract unwanted attention, but she persisted. It reminded MacCready of a caged Yao Guai he’d seen once, pacing back and forth along the bars of its tiny cell. 

     Madeline walked into her bedroom, and dropped onto the sofa. She left the door open, however, so MacCready followed, pausing in the doorway, waiting to be invited in. A ridiculous framed painting of kittens playing with a pink ball of yarn hung on the wall, peering down at them. 

     “Where the hell-- where did you find  _ that _ ?” He asked. 

     “Neighbor’s house. Miss Gresham. She must have had 20 cats.” Madeline let out a little snort. “Cat Lady. But she was sweet. I shouldn’t laugh. She loved those cats...And I never saw a single rodent on that island...Well, maybe the occasional squirrel. But never a rat. Not like the subway…” She laughed a little. “Those ones were the size of cats. And they didn’t even need radiation to get that big.” 

     MacCready took that as an invitation, and circled around the sofa to sit down next to her. “You took the trains often?” He tried to picture her sitting on one of the old subway cars, immaculate and tiny and prim in a pencil skirt and blouse and heels, with briefcase set beside her crossed ankles as she read the Boston Bugle, or hustling down one of the old marble-floored courthouses, those heels clicking furiously, her face as stern and lips painted red. The thought sent a chill through him, and he banished it as quickly as he could.  _ She’s the boss. Keep it to business, MacCready.  _

     “All the time. It’s hard to imagine, now, but they were the best way to get around...well, before. Driving was always a mess...You know there was a nickname for people who lived in the Commonwealth then...” She paused, pursed her lips a little. “Massholes.” 

     MacCready laughed. “Applies better now than then, maybe.”

     “Surely.” She let her head loll back and stared up at the ceiling. “Mac...Have you heard any news about Duncan? I’m sure the cure is there by now.” 

     It had been there for a month, but he hadn’t mentioned it. “He’s fine, Maddie. It...it worked. Daisy let me know last time we were in Goodneighbor.” 

     Madeline bolted upright. “Why didn’t you tell me, RJ? That’s wonderful news! I’m so glad for him. So glad for you. Both of you.” 

_      She called you RJ. She’s being serious.  _ “You have a lot going on...I didn’t want to bother you with it. It seemed…”  _ Insensitive _ , he thought, given that she had helped him save his son, while still having no idea where her own was. If he was even alive. 

      “You should have told me.” Her brow knitted together with hurt, but she didn’t say anything else and flopped back onto the sofa and looked up at the ceiling again.  _ He’s fine. He’s fine,  _ she repeated in her head, over and over again, and her heart hummed with relief. If she could find a cure for some pre-war blue-boiled plague in the basement of a feral-infested Med-Tek building, surely she could find Shaun.  _ Surely. _

     “You know…” She paused, not taking her eyes off a crack in the sheet metal roof.  _ I need to fix that...It leaks every time it rains.  _ “I loved--I love Shaun. I won’t stop looking for him. But...It was hard. After he was born. I didn’t feel like I could be a mother. I’d worked so hard to make it through law school as a woman. Nobody took me seriously...They just assumed I whored my way through school. After Shaun was born, everyone gave me such a hard time, still...You can't be a career woman, not with a newborn. I was working as a public defender...I defended people who couldn't afford to hire an attorney. I hardly slept, between the workload and taking care of Shaun and...” She thought back to the formula, the pacifiers, looking at him in his crib and being afraid if she touched him, he might break. “The doctor gave me nerve pills, but it didn’t help. I wasn’t happy...he...well, having him changed so many things. I couldn’t…And Nate picked up all the slack. He never complained.”  _ I don’t know why I’m telling you this.  _ “Nate was a good man. A soldier. A provider.” She frowned. “I loved him. But...I wasn’t  _ in  _ love with him anymore. And Shaun...God, I don’t know if he really even knew I was his mother. I think he loved Codsworth more than he loved me.” 

     MacCready watched her face intently, the way she would pause and her lips would purse lightly before she started speaking again, trying to form the words in a way that sounded less awful. Her guilt was palpable. “I pretended everything was fine. But it wasn’t fine. Nate died thinking I loved him...but…” she turned her head, her pale grey eyes settling on MacCready’s face. “I was thinking about leaving him, Mac. What kind of person does that make me? I wanted to leave, and let him...let him have custody of Shaun. Not abandon him. I would have still been there...just...I wasn’t good enough for them.” She watched him for some semblance of rejection, some inkling of disgust. But it wasn’t there. 

     “Lucy told me about something, once. Where mothers can’t...can’t bond well with their new babies. And if you already weren’t happy...Life is hard and it’s not fair, Mads, and people do things for crazy reasons, and they do things for solid reasons, and sometimes the line between the two is so thin you’d need a laser to split it.”  _ A fucking therapist? Is that what I am?  _ “I’m sure you’re judging yourself more than anyone else ever could.” He took her chin in his hand. “You have spent months searching for your son. That’s more than anyone did for me. For the other kids in Little Lamplight. You could have given up when you fell out of that pod, just moved on and made some new life for yourself, or put a bullet in your head, or laid down on the ground until some raider did it for you. But you didn’t. And while you were at it, you damn well made yourself a little empire of settlements. Making lives better. You didn’t have to do any of that. You didn’t have to help me. You didn’t have to help Duncan. Hell, Mads. A public defender? You were helping people before the bombs ever even dropped.” 

     Madeline looked at him over the top of her glasses, considering. _ I don’t know if I believe you, RJ, but you always know what to say.  _ “Thank you...I...well. I’ll have to think more about that.” She looked away. “We probably need to get going. You know it doesn’t do any good for me to just sit around thinking like this. I’m sure Preston can find something for us to do.”


End file.
